Dance Review | Pennsylvania Ballet

'Swan Lake' Moves Inside, Décor by Degas

By ANNA KISSELGOFF

Published: June 8, 2004

PHILADELPHIA, June 6 — Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov knew best when they choreographed their version of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" in 1895. But among those who insist on departing from that touchstone original, Christopher Wheeldon can now lay claim to one of the most compelling alternative versions with his new staging of "Swan Lake" for the Pennsylvania Ballet.

It is no surprise that Mr. Wheeldon, resident choreographer at New York City Ballet, is again brimming with dance ideas and stunning images. Still, the ballet's premiere over the weekend at the Academy of Music here opened with an unexpected scene: a clear allusion to a Degas ballet painting.

This time around the conceit is that a male dancer in a Degas-like studio is portraying Prince Siegfried in a rehearsal. À la Stanislavsky, he identifies with his role and becomes Siegfried. Reality and fantasy blur.

Like Rudolf Nureyev, Mr. Wheeldon has set "Swan Lake" inside a room, suggesting that the lakeside encounters of Odette, the swan queen, and Prince Siegfried, as protagonist, are projections of the hero's mind. But in the end the male dancer returns to reality. Definitely not Siegfried and back in the classroom, he does a double take when he sees his ballerina as herself.

For all the patches of shaky dramaturgy, Mr. Wheeldon conveys nothing heavy and something highly imaginative. Here again, as he did in "Scènes de Ballet" and "Variations Sérieuses" at City Ballet, he is fascinated with the way dancers train and perform. Here again, he mixes the humorous and the serious. He has rechoreographed a hilarious floor show for the ballroom scene, in which Odile, Odette's evil double, seduces Siegfried. But this masked ball is the reality that the hero encounters.

Among rich roués, the members of the Jockey Club who acquired mistresses from the Paris Opera Ballet, the man in the top hat and tails from a Degas painting becomes the stand-in for Rothbart, the evil magician. This masked opera ball is all too real, full of decadence and brilliantly summed up in the divertissement: a Russian dance that becomes a strip tease, an invasion of can-can girls (dancing to the tarantella!), and best of all, an overcooked Spanish dance for a smirking and shoving trio.

Before you can say Matthew Bourne and recall his so-called male "Swan Lake," the thing to remember is that Mr. Wheeldon has retained the main pieces of choreography by Petipa and Ivanov (Mr. Bourne did not) and that his sendup of the Act III character dances is not a sendup of "Swan Lake" as a whole.

Part of Mr. Wheeldon's ruling conceit is that the fantasy characters are real people the protagonist encounters in his life. Thus the Patron, elegant in tails, is transformed into Rothbart as a tramp in tattered coat, stalking the swans in the dreamlike lakeside scenes. Thanks to an ingenious combination of décor, lighting and choreography, the ballet studio onstage becomes a magical place of astonishing visual impact.

Mr. Wheeldon has assembled a crack team that has worked on Broadway and in dance. Adrianne Lobel's sets begin with a screen that suggests a fragment of a ballet studio. There are a barre and a bench for the Degas girls, wearing Jean-Marc Puissant's beautiful knee-length tutus and neck ribbons. When the screen rises, Ms. Lobel offers a big room with three sets of French doors (as in Degas's pictures), a huge tarnished mirror and ballet barres along the side walls, which have more portals.

The white-and-gray wallpaper is transformed into different colors, often green and blue, by Natasha Katz's spectacular lighting, and James Buckhouse's projections introduce a moving flock of swans on those walls.

Much of Mr. Wheeldon's theatricality comes from the brilliance with which he moves the dancers in and out of the set's openings. The wallpaper becomes translucent, and the swans are seen dancing behind the walls as well as in front of them. What is a room? What is a lake? In Act IV the back wall disappears to reveal an expanse of waves.

In Act III the waltzing guests at the ball are seen through a mirror, and Odile enters through a door in that mirror.

Musically, Mr. Wheeldon has cut transitional passages considerably. The idea is to plunge directly into the action. On Sunday afternoon Mr. Wheeldon's primary cast was led by Riolama Lorenzo, a sensuous Odette and Odile who brought out the traditional emotional nuances through her expressive dancing, and Zachary Hench, whose Siegfried acted ardently and danced with impressive precision in Act III. Alexei Charov was eye-catching as a decidedly crazed Rothbart.

On Saturday night Arantxa Ochoa and James Ady, like Meredith Rainey's sinister Rothbart, were more straightforward. The passion here was less evident, but Ms. Ochoa's individuality makes even her pure-dance approach interesting.

Mr. Wheeldon's new choreography is better in Acts I and III than in Act IV. Elsewhere he has taken some liberties with structure. In Act II Odette's solo comes before her pas de deux with the prince. Dramatically this is a loss, since Ivanov's dances for the corps and the four cygnets (splendidly danced by Laura Bowman, Charity Eagens, Jessica Gattinella and Jennifer Smith) and the shift in Odette's solo sequence delay the idea that any romance has developed between Odette and Siegfried. And although Mr. Wheeldon makes clear in a program note that he does not want the prince to swear his love to Odette in Act II, it is then unclear why the hero's infatuation with Odile at the ball is a betrayal of his fantasy Odette.

These are dramatic glitches that may seem minor when compared with the high level of choreography on view, both old and new. But when the drama comes to the fore, it needs some logic.

Still, the choreography is thrilling. Under Roy Kaiser's artistic direction, the Pennsylvania Ballet has risen to the occasion of Mr. Wheeldon's technical demands.

Even the can-can girls show off their rumps merrily. No wonder Siegfried or his alter ego wants out. But audiences should want in when the performances resume on Wednesday, continuing through Sunday afternoon.